What a week it’s been. Amongst the buckets of rain, pub crawling, Batman sightings and free t-shirts there was in fact a little injection of Drupal to the Greater London area in the form of DrupalCon 2011; we thought what better way to round it up than an interview with Robert Castelo, Drupal wizard and organiser extraordinaire.

Tell us about how you first got started with Drupal

I started using Drupal in 2004, when I got fed up with clients calling me up to change text on their sites and was looking for a CMS. First time I saw Drupal.org I thought it was really ugly and I didn’t understand most of what it was talking about, but after trying out several other systems it made sense and I could see Drupal was very well thought out.

What’s your fondest Drupal memory or project over the past 12 months?

I’m very proud of the work we’ve done on www.sagepay.com. A lot of Drupal developers regularly use the knowledge base on the site, and have told me that being able to quickly get to the information they need has saved them a lot of time.

What’s the question you’re asked most about Drupal?

Number one question for a while has been "When will Drupal 7 be released". The launch of Drupal 7 in January was huge for the Drupal community, and has been adopted faster than any previous version.

What’s the best thing about arranging and attending UK Drupal meetups?

It’s very rewarding when a couple of months after an event someone tells me that attending convinced them to give Drupal a go, and that it’s opened up a successful new career for them. Also it’s always a lot of fun to meet so many of the smart people that make up the Drupal community.

What were you most looking forward to about DrupalCon London?

At the last DrupalCon Amatai Burstein’s gave the best presentation I’ve ever seen. I was really looking forward to his DrupalCon London talk. As always I was also looking forward to the keynote speech by Dries Buytaert, Drupal’s founder, which gives an overview of the past 6 months and where we’re going.

What was your favourite moment of DrupalCon 2011?

My favourite moment was when @waako and @mysty turned up dressed as Henry VIII and Napoleon to lead the Great DrupalCon London Pub Crawl – kudos for having amazing costumes and being great guides! Thanks also to Ubelly for co-organising and making it so much fun.

Click here to get involved with the Drupal UK community, or here to find out more about Drupal and Microsoft.

Published by AndyRobb

Andy’s so into web there’s a suspicion he’s actually Peter Parker MK II. Having spent a couple of years at the Microsoft mothership in Seattle you’ll most probably hear him rambling about business opportunity, experiences that ‘pop’ but most probably just something about music.